Training peasants to fight

[Twichyboy]

Its completely plausible, in the Medieval ages, peasants made up the bulk of the armies,
actually most didn't even receive training, and just had whatever weapons and armor they owned when called by their king to fight.

However it would only work if the enemy army was also made up of lowly commoners,

in a DnD setting though, an Undead, Ogre, Orc, or Drow army would absolutely annihilate a group of peasants, i would think the norm would be for human kingdoms to even stand a chance, to either have a professional standing army, or to train their peasants regularly.

Gameplay wise, setting them up with a warrior template would definitely make sense

 

[wingsandsword]

in a DnD setting though, an Undead, Ogre, Orc, or Drow army would absolutely annihilate a group of peasants, i would think the norm would be for human kingdoms to even stand a chance, to either have a professional standing army, or to train their peasants regularly.

Why?

An Orc Warrior 1, like a typical 3e Orc, is only slightly better than a Human Warrior 1 (and that difference could easily be compensated by superior tactics of the higher INT humans and orderly Lawful tactics compared to unorganized Chaotic mob actions)

Low-end undead like Skeletons and Zombies would be easily dispatched even by Human Warrior 1's. Zombies, with their limited/slow movement are good to outmaneuver, and skeletons are pretty dang weak if you remember to use bludgeoning weapons.

Ogres? When your forces are size Large and Giant-type, you're beyond any typical concept of "army". If you are presuming that there are rampaging armies of Ogres, are there any Kobolds or Goblins left or did they get wiped out too? The bigger they are, the rarer they are. An army of ogres would require a ridiculous amount of food to support. It's far more plausible that a handful of ogres would accompany an army of orcs as heavies. If they are on the battlefield, large targets with lots of HP and not a lot of special defenses would be prime targets for low-end siege weapons (fire a ballista at an Ogre, see how long he lasts).

Drow? Since they are an underground race that suffers penalties in daylight (and in some Editions their magic gear is irrevocably damaged/destroyed if it ever touches even a single ray of daylight) they aren't going to be in a take-and-hold land war with any surface people. They are typically underdark-dwellers for a reason. Drow raiding parties might come up at night, but small raiding parties are the sorts of things that PC's are best at thwarting, and if they want to engage in open warfare, they will likely be strongly outnumbered with a clock hanging over their head of how long until sunrise.

 

[howandwhy99]

Have you done this in a campaign? How did you handle it? How WOULD you handle it?

Is it even doable in a rush? Or is the idea laughably implausible?

We tried it with a town we suspected about to be attacked. We were right about the attack, but most of the training was very quick. Mostly it was about taking those willing to fight and massing them in positions we could lead the enemy, a bugbear squadron, to.

It worked well enough, but the training wasn't really training at all. NPCs can advance in other classes, but simple training is Irregular armed or unarmed units. On a battlefield they are pretty much poor cannon fodder. But they are better than nothing at all. In AD&D it depends upon the race on whether characters dual or multi-class. Fighting classes could train NPCs to be a Regular warrior, but it would take months to years to really gain the effectiveness the class abilities represent.

This kind of thing is presumably going on all the time in the game. Guards and militaries are trained. First they draft only a portion of the population. If it's all out war, then it's any able bodied adult. That's still a small portion. Then training is as quick as possible, yet while still leading to effective combat ability. Trained commanders require even more training and are quite a bit more valuable, but the effect they have on their unit's success really matters.

Examples from the trope you mentioned are more from the first paragraph. They're Irregulars led by a party of hardened veterans, presumably the players. The second paragraph comes to fore when running a military. This could be from gaining authority from a settled territory or organization. Combat is far from the only kind of organizational training possible though. Running a thieves guild means training thieves too. It used to be all classes started play after they finished training in their class. Counting NPCs classes into this list and there's quite a bit of training going on in the game world, outside threat or no.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I find the mob rules from DMGII model this nicely. I've used them before for this purpose.

 

[howandwhy99]

in a DnD setting though, an Undead, Ogre, Orc, or Drow army would absolutely annihilate a group of peasants, i would think the norm would be for human kingdoms to even stand a chance, to either have a professional standing army, or to train their peasants regularly.

Demographics really begins to matter when you look at challenge rating by monster. 10,000 human peasants don't hold up against 10,000 human 1st level Fighters. But the resources to train such a vast army would be huge. 1st level Fighters are even beyond Regulars in my game, but are considered Elites on the battlefield. It's a huge mismatch. Remove the class consideration and only account for race (monster type really) and 10,000 dragons are going to eat most any equivalent sized army for lunch (literally )

But big creatures like Dragons and Storm Giants and Rocs and such exist in far fewer numbers. They just don't have the resources to grow their populations much larger. Once those 10,000 humans are eaten the dragon army is going to starve. How did they get so large in the first place? Figuring back in Frequency (demographics) can help account for these potential overwhelming forces from popping up.

 

[Twichyboy]

Excellent points on Orc, drow, and ogre armies, got to say I didn't really think of those

However for undead, realistically, battles were not fights to the death, battles would only last as long as one sides would be willing to fight until they gave up hope, but undead have the numbers, and are completely willing to fight to the last man as their moral would not break, and unless the peasants can be trained as clerics I would say that the undead would definitely win over most other armies

 

[ValhallaGH]

Which is why necromancers always think they are unstoppable.
And then some pesky adventurers show up and stop them.

Undead are never in "armies", they're in big mobs. An actual army is vastly more flexible, adaptable, and capable than any mob. Even a mob of Shades. (Though a mob of incorporeal killers that instantly transform fallen foes into allies is pretty certain to obliterate most of the world.)

Armies fight together like the best adventuring parties do. They support themselves, set up the foe, and hit him when he's vulnerable. And when they can't win, they run away, covering each other to get as many out as possible.
Undead "armies" are swarms shambling across the land. They don't fight like armies (barring some kind of Dread Lord), so they die like chaotic and disorganized mobs. In the case of Dread Lords providing organization - send in the special forces: the Player Characters. The army will handle the rest.

 

[Tayne]

sometimes people use words figuratively

 

[Bluenose]

Its completely plausible, in the Medieval ages, peasants made up the bulk of the armies, actually most didn't even receive training, and just had whatever weapons and armor they owned when called by their king to fight.

Peasants (at least, peasant farmers) rarely got called up to fight, there are extant law records describing the military obligations of different classes including weapon training, and many towns and castles contained armouries with reserves of weapons - although on the last point, the laws often defined what weapons you were required to own.

 

[Henry]

I've seen the OPPOSITE of this play out in a Forgotten Realms game, once.

The PCs, wandering through a mountainous area, came across a small village nestled within, below a tribe of Hill Giants extorting payment (money, goats, etc.) from the village. The villagers said, "Great Heroes, please save us!" The PCs valiantly marched off to the Hill Giants, doing no recon, to discover some two dozen Hill Giants inside. They attacked, got their butts kicked, retreated straight back to the village, where the giants saw them go. Giants put two and two together, and razed the village to the ground, sacking burning, killing. The PCs hid out in root cellar in a basement until morning, and the sounds had stopped.

They dig their way out to an early morning fog, burned timbers, stone rubble, scores of dead bodies... They healed up and left, not saying a word to anyone about the incident...